No matter how you feel about Donald Trump, publicly threatening the life of a President (or a President-Elect) is never a good idea – especially if you’re the CEO of a large tech company. Matt Harrigan can attest to this; the now former head of cybersecurity firm PacketSled handed in his resignation after writing that he would “kill the president. Elect.”
Harrigan was one of many people unhappy about Trump’s recent victory, and expressed his feelings in a series of messages on election night that were part of a private thread on his Facebook page. Unluckily for him, someone captured his rants by screenshotting the posts.
In addition to the direct ““I’m going to kill the president” message, Harrigan also asked the secret service to “bring it,” before writing: “Getting a sniper rifle and perching myself where it counts. Find a bedroom in the whitehouse that suits you motherf***er. I’ll find you.”
Harrigan proceeded to tell the US exactly what he thought of it – “In no uncertain terms, f*** you America. Seriously. F*** off." He then appeared to turn into Ron Burgundy: "Really San Deigo? Trump? Go F*** yourself San Diego."
After the screenshots popped up on Reddit and various websites, Harrigan issued the following apology.
My recent Facebook comment was intended to be a joke, in the context of a larger conversation, and only privately shared as such. Anyone who knows me, knows that I do not engage in this form of rhetoric with any level of seriousness and the comment most certainly does not represent my real personal views in any regard. I apologize if anything that I said was either taken seriously, was offensive, or caused any legitimate concern.
Best Regards, Matt Harrigan
But it seems PacketSled and its board of directors failed to see the funny side. “Once we were made aware of these comments, we immediately reported this information to the secret service and will cooperate fully with any inquiries,” the company wrote in a statement. One day later, the board accepted Harrigan’s resignation.
This isn’t the first incident of public figure getting into trouble for threatening to kill Trump. A UK journalist, Monisha Rajesh, faced a barrage of criticism and was forced to delete her Twitter account last week after tweeting: “it’s about time for a presidential assassination.”
Journalist Monisha Rajesh called for 'Presidential Assassination', fired | India Live Today https://t.co/XKx6CdXzO5
— Skip (@SkipScipioni) November 12, 2016
https://www.techspot.com/news/67053-ceo-loses-job-after-posting-kill-donald-trump.html
